#Anthologycemberuary

[thebibliomancer]

Liveblog: “Put Back That Universe!” by F. Gwynplaine MacIntyre

So that title should clue you in how delightful this story is going to end up being.

Very.

Noted ne’erdowell Smedley Faversham travels back to before the beginning of the Universe to steal it. The entire universe. At the moment of the Big Bang when its just a singularity that once could pick up and stick in one’s pocket and go strolling away.

That is exactly what I hoped the story would be when I saw the title.

Although some may naysay the thing as silly.

At this point, the Gentle Reader may wonder how Smedley Faversham was able to stay alive, since the oxygen molecules necessary for breathing (to say nothing of chuckling) had not yet been created by the cosmic aftereffects of the Big Bang. Hence, thus, and consequently there was no air for Smedley to breathe while he was standing at a slight distance in Space-Time from the creation of the universe. For that matter - or lack of matter - there was nothing solid for Smedley to be standing on, since all of the atomic mass in all the infinite dimensions of the universe (minus 189 subatomic particles which still hadn’t arrived yet, and Smedley himself) had already converged into the all-consuming hypersphere. By this same application of pitiless logic, the Gentle Readers may also wonder how Smedley was able to see the hyphersphere, since nearly all the photons in the universe were now inside the gravity well of the sphere, beyond reach of Smedley’s optic nerves.

The Gentle Readers should mind their damned business.

Anyway, Smedley’s wait is interrupted by a subatomic particle. He can tell its a subatomic particle because it has “I AM A SUBATOMIC PARTICLE. I AM NOT A LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICER IN DISGUISE” written on it.

BUT PLOT TWIST, its Chrono-Constable Newgate Callender of the Paradox Patrol disguised as a quark (he’s plainclothes).

Newgate demands to know what Smedley is doing and Smedley confesses to the biggest heist in... well I can’t say history or time because they’re outside it.

Smedley had planned to file the serial numbers off, maybe repaint the universe so nobody could prove he didn’t obtain it legally. Maybe sell it for parts - break it up into separate galaxies and sell them one at a time. Say they fell off the back of a truck.

But Newgate points out that there is nobody to sell it too. If you take the universe before its created, nobody will be around.

Ah but what about alternate universes? Look around, do you see any? Clearly alternate universes sprang into being from the same Big Bang.

Which fails to happen. By traveling back in time to before the Event 1, Smedley took energy out of the system and now there’s not enough for the critical mass that would start existence.

And that’s definitely a crime. Newgate decides to charge him with the murder of everybody in the universe as well as all the property damage. In one courts? Under what laws? They don’t exist anymore, Smedley protests.

Newgate will think of something.

Alternatively, Smedley decides to destroy the evidence and eats the proto-universe.

But the thermal energy of his heartburn is just the last bit of energy the big bang needs and the universe happens, in Smedley’s stomach.

He wakes up shackled to a bed in the paradox patrol headquarters. Luckily, curry is notorious about how fast it passes through the digestive system. So the universe escaped Smedley before anything bad happened to him.

Although, due to him, the red shift is now orange shift. Way to go, Smedley.

However, since what he did happened outside the universe, it happened outside Space and Time so it technically never took place.

“Looks like you’ve beaten the rap... again, Faversham.”

And for some reason, Newgate’s sister wants to invite Smedley to dinner with the family in celebration of her promotion for busting ‘a gang of time-traveling creationists who went back to Olduvai Gorge during the Pleistocene epoch and tried to murder all the hominids.’

Smedley, however, is not hungry. Eating all matter will do that to a person.

[thebibliomancer]

Liveblog: Milord Sir Smiht, the English Wizard by Avram Davidson

This story is big and long but that's because it has a lot of textual embellishments and extraneous details. Very interesting writing style but the general basic gist of the plot is thusly.

Doctor Engelbert Eszterhazy finds himself stalking this dude for no greater reason than the guy is wearing a long black cloak with a brown lining. Since long black cloaks aren’t in fashion and those that do wear them have a red lining, this garment struck the doctor as individualism of the highest order. And since its rude to stop someone in the street to ask about their fashion sense, instead he follows him.

Like etiquette demands.

Anyway. The individual stops into the Brothers Swartbloi snuff shop and Engelbert follows after and inquires about the man’s identity.

He happened to have left a business card identifying himself as “MILORD SIR SMIHT, Wizard anglais.”

With the business card, Engelbert can just pop by the man’s business instead of following him everywhere.

When he does, Sir Smiht lampshades that Engelbert followed him halfway across the city but then establishes that his rates are two ducats for a half hour. Engelbert can ask whatever question he wants during that time or just stare. But if he’s interested in employment of the odyllic force, then they should start at once.

Engelbert decides to spend the time performing phrenology on Sir Smiht while Smiht talks about his past.

Seems he was sent abroad by his family after he accidentally disappeared Pigafetti Jones, Royal Astronomer of Wales, during a demonstration of the odyllic forces and then couldn’t bring him back.

Anyway, Engelbert makes an appointment to come back another day.

ANOTHER DAY, and Sir Smiht needs Engelbert’s help translating for a woman who doesn’t speak any languages he does. The Widow Apterhots wishes to be placed in communication with her late husband to find out if he’s happy, wherever he ended up - since he didn’t believe in Hell, just Heaven and Purgatory.

The english wizard sets up his odyllic equipment and places a crucifix that the late husband wore all the time on a small table and bade the widow to hold a pair of metal grips and to focus on her husband.

Sir Smiht asks the husband to move the crucifix if he’s happy wherever he is. Instead, the entire massive sideboard which the equipment rests on starts to move and both the english wizard and Engelbert have to hold it.

Smiht views the results as questionable but the widow is satisfied. Her husband was always so strong!

LATER, Engelbert also sees Smiht use the odyllic apparatus to communicate with the Wizard of Brazil.

Later later, around nine months from when Engelbert first met the wizard, a Frow Puprikosch insists that the wizard see her now and won’t take a no for an answer. She has divorced her husband or he’s dead and the marriage is annulled and anyway he’s much happier in Argentina or somewhere in Africa.

Point being, she’s only interested in love now and she wants the wizard to use odyllic force to make known to her her true love.

Since she won’t go away, Sir Smiht agrees and has her grasp the thingers. But the end result is that a naked man pops out of the equipment - actually the missing Pigafetti Jones.

He’s confused that thirty years has passed but whatever, his horrible wife must be dead and I say who is this lovely lady here?

Frow Puprikosch is very much not displeased with this occurrence and goes off with Mr. Jones.

And incidentally, Sir Smiht’s brother Augustus turns up and says Sir Smiht can come home, since it appears that the missing astronomer has turned up.

Sir Smiht very much would like to return home. Engelbert asks him whether he wants to bring his odyllic equipment and with a moment’s consideration, takes his fancy wizard velvet cap and places it on Engelbert’s head proclaiming that he is now and henceforth the wizard here.

Doctor Eszterhazy looked at the equipage of the odyllic forces, and he slowly rubbed his hands together and smiled.

[thebibliomancer]

Liveblog: The Absolute and Utter Impossibility of the Facts in the Case of the Vanishing of Henning Vok (A.k.a. The Amazing Blitzen) (R.N. Jack Ralph Cole) by Jack Adrian

That is an amazing title.

So, the titular Henning Vok (aka the Amazing Blitzen, r.n. Jack Ralph Cole) stabbed Herman Jediah Klauss, the Moriarty of Manhattan, in the forehead with an ice pick in plain view of two cops, locked himself in the bathroom, and had completely vanished when the police busted down the door.

That is all very clear. No mystery there whatsoever. In fact, Vok even left a note confessing to the murder and a bunch of others aside.

“Attached is a list of robberies which should feature heavily in your ‘Unsolved’ files. Strike ‘em. I plead guilty on all counts.”

He’s going to retire on his well-gotten gains and he wanted to kill Klauss first for being such a dick.

No, the only real mystery is how he escaped the bathroom without being captured. The window hadn’t been opened in fifty years, the floor and walls are solid, there’s a vent but it has a very choppy fan in it and its very high off the ground.

You could argue that the cops were paid off except one of them was Lieutenant O’Mahoney, notoriously incorruptible and the only totally honest cop on the roster.

Freelance impossible mystery detective Professor Stanislaus Befz posits that it was a deranged midget hiding in a hollowed out hump on an impostor hunchback. But he always says that.

“Balderdash! Out of the three thousand thirty-three Miracle Problems I’ve investigated, analyzed and cataloged over the past quarter century, crazed mannikins hidden in the false humps of ersatz hunchbacks account for well over half!”

He’s not even discouraged by the fact that Vok was a very rangy man who had absolutely no humps. “Mass hypnosis!”

Lieutenant O’Mahoney has his own theory. Vok used to be a contortionist and is skinny as a rake. Its an old building from the 1900s when they built everything bigger. And finally, Vok killed Klauss so he would fall into a tub full of water.

It all leads to one, obvious conclusion. Klauss’ body falling into the tub made a splash that covered up another kind of splash. Clearly, Vok flushed himself down the toilet.

[thebibliomancer]

Liveblog: A Case of Four Fingers by John Grant

Okay, so this one is a bit weird. Or rather, its a typical detective story (seriously, comic fantasy writers really love detective stories of all kinds and weird sub-genres). But its also a bit weird.

See, the story takes place in a small village called Cadaver-in-the-Offing. Two shops and a pub kind of thing. It has a population of about two-hundred if you look at it one way. Or two hundred thousand if you look at it another way.

Because its one of those villages where somebody dies every week and you have to wonder about the population. And it used to be that each victim and side character actually was an individual person but when these things keep happening, characters start blending together. Who can tell one victim from another?

So to save money, the Authorities got big into recycling.

Why have to put out the cash for the undertaker’s bills, when people could be found on the unemployment queues who’d be only too eager to accept zero wages in exchange for board, lodging... and immortality? Oh, sure, they’d have to accept being murdered every once in a while, but they wouldn’t be dead long before being revived, given a different name, maybe a fresh wig, a new home to live in, a new role and probably a new spouse or lover.

And this is all made possible by the protagonist. A resurrectionist of some manner. “So let’s just say no more than that it’s my job to take the ... secondary products of the detectives’ industry and... and mend them.”

Not to say that people like him even though his services make Cadaver-in-the-Offing possible. They avoid him like the plague and look at him like they’ve just trodden in something nasty if they’re forced to deal with him.

A bit of a land of fiction dealy going on.

The plot itself starts when out of eight corpses delivered to Protagonist, one doesn’t arrive. A stage magician called Gerald G. Dukes, known as the Even Mightier Spongini. No corpse, no rez. This has never happened even once in the ten-years-that-was-really-a-century-that-felt-like-eternity.

Protagonist finds out that Inspector Romford (”big in the library market”) was behind the case and he goes to visit him.

He finds Romford getting quite drunk in a pub because he thought he had it all sewn up but damn magicians and being inscrutable asses.

So the detective relays the events of the case. How he attended a show of the Mighty Thrombosis preceded by a performance by the dazzling family acrobatic show the Seven Deadly Finns.

The Mighty Thrombosis went through his act all the way up to the grand finale - where he would pull a live t-rex out of a hat. But all he pulls out is a severed hand. Leaving him to stutter weakly that “This... this was not... intended to happen...”

The hand was identified as belonging to Dukes and since Dukes and MacGregor (Mighty Thrombosis) were archrivals in the magic biz and also in the Dukes having slept with MacGregor’s wife and stolen his tricks biz, MacGregor was held as the prime suspect.

But. There’s no sign of the body. And a severed hand doesn’t necessarily prove murder if you can’t find a blasted body.

So with all the details of the case, Protagonist tells Romford its not his job to solve cases. He’s not a character like everyone else in Cadaver-in-the-Offing. He can’t even offer any useful leads. All he can do is give general life advice to the increasingly drunk detective on the importance of temperance.

Quite later in the afternoon, Romford calls Protagonist and goes oh hey Temperance is important but it makes me think of that old sixties/seventies pop group the Temperance Seven, where the joke was there were actually nine of them.

And come to think of it, there’s only six in the actual Seven Deadly Finns group but seven left the theater.

With Protagonist’s not hint, Romford figured that Dukes and MacGregor’s wife Zelda had conspired the whole thing to frame MacGregor and then run off together. The Finns were in on it because they couldn’t stand MacGregor either.

Romford caught up to Dukes at the Old Bull Hotel all packed up and waiting for Zelda. Of course, the worst that Dukes could be charged with is conspiring to waste police time but Romford was quite angry and invited Dave Knuckle into the arrest and well- Dukes’ body did show up in a hopper after all to the resurrection office.

Oddly, Zelda never showed up. Seems she used the whole incident to skip out on both men in her life. Romford put out an alert to the ports and airports but thinks he missed her. And nobody is going to issue an extradition order for what she’s done.

The conversation goes on a little longer but Protagonist can’t help but notice that at no point did Romford thank him for the case-breaking not-hint. So he doesn’t feel guilty that he kept Zelda’s location a secret.

See, he had met her during the course of Miss Grimthorpe’s The Kat who Killed the Konjurers and they had fallen in love. She hadn’t skipped town. She had come to the one place nobody in Cadaver-in-the-Offing would dream of looking. Because of all the disdain they have for him?

They could live here together for the rest of their lives if they wanted to and nobody would know. And the story ends with ‘a traditional way of celebrating things like this...’

Which is makeouts.

[thebibliomancer]

Liveblog: The Swords and the Stones by E.K. Grant

I read several stories last night between swearing at squid kids so lets get those knocked out because I am way off schedule.

This is a story that does not actually involve sticking many swords into many stones to see who will become the multi-king.

Even so, its a good story.

Mighty-thewed but injured and exhausted warrior-prince Thol is following the vague instructions of his broken Singing Sword. It wants him to go somewhere and its a right pain if he doesn’t listen. Did you know that a Singing Sword will wail in duet with itself if its broken in half? Thol knows now.

Following the process of going the direction that makes it whine less, Thol encounters a talking marmot that tries to brain him with a rock. He manages to get the marmot at half sword point but spares it when he sees that it has a wife marmot and marmot kids.

The marmot in exchange tells him where he can find water and advises him to be polite to the old man.

At the pool he finds old man Hanegral, crafter of the Singing Swords. The mage is wary of company, having been hounded out of a neighboring kingdom a few years back due to a payment dispute, a Shrinking Curse, and a king’s favorite organ.

Even so. Thol tells Hanegral that he needs to have his Singing Sword mended for the forces of Krollok have overrun his kingdom, killed his father, and sundered his Singing Sword.

Hanegral is not happy to hear this. Singing Sword’s are guaranteed unbreakable. Plus, Krollok was an apprentice of his that ran off when he failed his first journeyman’s tests. He never learned how to make Singing Swords but he apparently learned enough to break them by magnetically attacking the magic that was forged into them.

The old mage invites Thol into his cave, shows him his living fossil (having used magic to talk to the ‘Please-and-thank-you sea Saurian’ (it prizes politeness. Always be polite in fantasy settings)), and examines the broken blade.

Hanegral decides that not only will he fix the Singing Sword, he’ll provide Thol with a weapon to counter Krollok’s. Its bad for business having someone go around breaking your unbreakable product. Hanegral sets Thol up with a golden blade made of god-metal - strong as steel but a third lighter and can cut through standard sword-metal pretty easily. He also says he’s not expecting any payment - think of it as a loaner while Hanegral does warranty repairs on the Singing Sword. But if Thol could, bring back Krollok’s sword so Hanegral can figure out how to proof against the damage it does.

But Thol is not going to want to be in the area while the Singing Sword gets reforged. They get really noisy when you heat them up red-hot.

But then the marmots cry out. Some of Krollok’s men have followed Thol to this cave.

Thol attacks them and manages to take down a number of them with his superior sword but gets knocked out.

When he comes to he learns that the surviving intruders had been eaten by the fossilized lizard. The spell that lets Hanegral talk to it, lets it pull creatures back to its own time and Thol sees some fossilized human bones in the wall with it.

Anyway, with the golden sword, Thol will go back and confront Krollok and free his kingdom. But in case he loses, he’ll have a false letter that will lead Krollok here so he can be introduced to the living fossil. Hanegral doubts that Thol will lose in a fair fight but promises that if Krollok ends up here, he’ll be just one more uncouth snack for the please sea saurian.

I wonder if this is part of a larger story. We don’t see Thol go to confront Krollok but its implied that he’ll be successful. This seems to be one of those fantasy stories that's more about the concepts - magical Singing Swords and dinosaurs reaching through the ages. Fun concepts too.

[thebibliomancer]

Liveblog: Frog by Tina Rath

A retelling of the Frog Prince! Well, kinda. A telling of the after happily ever after in a Frog Prince that takes place in a modern but fantastical but terribly realistic setting. What with paparazzi and such.

The titular Frog Prince is writing a Dear Jane letter. Because he tried, oh lord did he tried. But this human life is not working out for him. Its not one thing. Its all the one things: the tabloids mounting a campaign suggesting that he left behind eight hundred fatherless tadpoles in the Well at the World’s End, a pop-genealogist going on cable tv to say there was a chance that he would put frog genes in the royal bloodline (although, as the king points out, the royal bloodline might be improved by that. Besides, remember aunt Ethelburga who got kidnapped by a dragon? Sure she was saved in the nick of time by Siegefried but they sure arranged a quick wedding and a nice looong honeymoon but their daughter certainly seems to have scales), and even just the hectic life expected of him.

Although if there was a last straw it was Ethelburga’s sons Franz and Ernst arranging frog legs during a banquet and the princess’ stricken face.

So he had run upstairs and dialed the witch that had turned him into a frog in the first place and asked to be turned back. She warns him that this is for keeps and gives him instructions.

He writes his letter apologizing and thanking the royal family for attempting to make him feel welcome and then sneaks out.

But the princess catches him. He apologizes and saying that it won’t work out and he’s going back to the well but she interrupts him. “It won’t work here. That’s why I’m coming with you... You want to be a frog, I’ll be a frog. That’s what marriage is about after all.”

Her expression at the banquet wasn’t that she had given up on the prince but that she had given up on her family. Franz and Ernst can fight over who gets to be the heir, if anyone will let them after the scandal.

Because it turns out that the dragon that kidnapped Ethelburga had a mate who was brooding eggs at the time (hence the princess kidnappery?) and dragons typically give birth to two boys and a girl. The girl dragon is willing to talk to the tabloids, do a blood test to prove she’s Franz and Ernst’s half-sister, and do topless pixs if the price is right (dragons are unusual - apparently they hatch out of eggs but still suckle their young? And have ‘six outstanding reasons for appearing on page three in one of our most popular tabloids.’ Welp.)

The family has known about this for a while but has been covering it up. Not that it matters because the princess is OUTTA HERE.

So the frog prince and soon to be frog princess follow the Silver Road (snail trails) across the garden and slowly change into frogs. Then webbed paw in webbed paw, they dive into the Well, never to be seen again by mortal sight.

“To live, happily for ever ever after.”

[thebibliomancer]

Liveblog: Gunsel and Gretel by Esther Friesner

Gunsel is an interesting piece of slang.

I’m kind of reminded of Nimrod, actually. In terms of how one popular work completely changes the popular definition.

Anyway, we have the witch from Hansel and Gretel as a lesbian private detective who fled Germany for America because of Hitler. She ends up getting involved in Nonsense and Shenanigans re: the goose that laid the golden egg when a dame walks into her office and the dame is Gretel.

Comic fantasy writers love them some fairy tale and nursery rhyme noir, geez.

The way the witch tells it, she had a soft spot for Gretel.

She and her brother were no babes in the woods, no matter how they twisted the story later. They might’ve looked like kids, small and scrawny on account of growing up at the Hard Knocks Hotel but they were both safely past the age of consent when they came nibble-nibbling at my door. And believe me, she let on like she would consent any day, if I didn’t pull a Betty Crocker on her. So that’s why he was in the cage but she had the run of the place. Oh yeah, she played innocent-but-willing-to-learn, and she played it good.

That’s why I believed her when she said she didn’t know how to tell if the oven was hote enough. That’s why I stuck my head in first, to show her how it’s done. My head was full of Stardust, dreams of her and me in that kitschy little woodland cottage, me with my feet up on the pile of kiddie bones, her by the oven, baking gingerbread, everything strictly Ladies’ Home Journal.

Next thing I knew, my face was full of live coals.

And then the shoving in an oven and them running off with her life’s savings. Dick move yeah but you’re not really an innocent victim here what with trying to eat her brother?

Anyway, Gretel spins a tale about her brother working for a Mr. LeGras and plotting to steal his Black Bird and then Hansel going missing. Gretel found his place all trashed up and got a referral to a detective for help.

Ms Witch finds that the story has holes so turns Gretel into a toad and rifles through her purse and finds a letter from Hansel that said he planned the theft because he was jealous that LeGras was paying more attention to his English valet Carlisle.

Anyway, the witch still has a soft spot for Gretel and decides to help her even though she knows she’s trouble. Which is when LeGras’ goons break into her office, bean her over the head and ransack her office. They’re there for Gretel but they accidentally take Bogey, the witch’s cat familiar because he had been in toad form at the time.

By the time the witch realizes, Mr. LeGras personally confronts her and he’s wearing a special enchanted ring that has a Reflect spell on it. Sticks and stones may break his bones but spells will bounce off of him and blow up her.

So she and Gretel are forced to return to LeGras’ house. Maybe Hansel will be more willing to talk if Gretel is in danger.

The witch offers another solution. She’s just got dragged into this so if LeGras hires her on as his new witch, she’ll magically track down the Black Bird. Of course, she’ll need her familiar to help work the spell. No tricks, just going to return him to his true form.

She doesn’t bother to mention that his true form is a huge demon and not a cat. Bogey the demon rips apart LeGras’ goons and the man himself and spits out the ring which the witch pockets.

She’s just finished turning Bogey back to convenient travel-sized  cat when Carlisle shows up and pulls a gun on her. Turns out that this was all a plot by Carlisle, Hansel and Gretel working together and using the witch to get rid of LeGras.

The Black Bird was hidden in LeGras’ disguised as a swan, purloined letter style.

But then Carlisle turns on Hansel and Gretel to take the goose for herself. Because Carlisle was another witch in disguise. A COMMIE WITCH. But also the witch that made the ring for LeGras. When she came to America, she found herself having to work for a pittance and figured she needed a big score to set herself up on easy street.

And now to fly off and leave the POV witch to have everything pinned on her.

The witch disagrees and explodes the goose. If she’s not getting anything out of this, neither is the other woman. Who I get the feeling is supposed to be someone too but I have no clue who.

This quite angers Not-Carlisle and she creates quite a huge fireball to throw at Gingerbread Witch. But she forgot about the ring. Boing fwip.

We cut to the witch back in her office, gluing the article about all of this into her scrapbook (its been blamed on a gas explosion). She figures she’s too old for this line of work and should retire, get a cozy cottage up the coast. Maybe get back into the bakery business with some babysitting on the side (please don’t) when another dame walks into the office.

“I need your help. It’s my stepmother. I - I think she wants me dead.”

And the witch completely forgets about retirement, knowing this was how her life was going to be “until the day they chucked my broom into the janitor’s closet at the LA morgue: one case after another, rubbing elbows with the dolls, and the deadbeats, the chumps and the chisellers, the gophers, gorillas and goons, with maybe a princess or two thrown in to keep the game interesting. A whole lot of fairy tales and not enough happily-ever-afters. But hey. That’s the way the cookie crumbles. Or the gingerbread.”

[thebibliomancer]

Liveblog: The Caliber of the Sword by Larry Lawrence

The old god of all blacksmiths had just finished his finest creation when a messenger arrived. The messenger looked at Vulcan’s forge and said “Longer.”

“What?!” roared Vulcan. “Why?!”

“The Lady in the Lake wants it longer. Something about an ‘extension of manhood.’ Add a couple of inches to it.”

So, yeah, this story is off to a good start.

So Vulcan puts the not-long-enough sword that he spent two hundred years making on the windowsill to cool and starts all over again.

The first sword drops off the windowsill and falls to England where it rested unnoticed for many years.

MANY YEARS LATER, a young, well-meaning lad named Brison is riding a borrowed horse, Swayback, through the countryside when the horse stops.

Brison notices that in a giant pile of manure, there is a sword that has been buried to the hilt. And to his surprise, the sword talks. The sword introduces himself as Calibre.

“Calibre? But isn’t that King Ar-”

“Hah! I am the original. I was supposed to be the fabled sword. Why do you think they call his Ex-calibur?”

Anyway, Calibre laments not being able to swear. Comes from being made to be a good sword but after being buried in poo for so long, Calibre is feeling a little bitter and wants to be evil, wants to be maaaaaad but more than that wants to be bad. He thinks one major act of unkindness would push him over to the other side.

Brison pledges to help because he’s nice that way. The worst deed he can think of is betraying someone but then realizes he’s the only person the sword knows.

“Despite me wanting to change my nature, I cannot betray the one who found me. That cannot change. I still have some rules I need to follow.”

Well, they’ll have time to think of something on the way to CAMELOT. Brison is headed for the yearly tournament. His grandmother who raised him after his parents died in a freak ox-car accident has fallen ill and he plans to petition King Arthur for aid.

“The sick grandmother story, uh-huh”

“How come everyone says that when I  tell my story?”

Anyway, Calibre has settled on a two-birds-one-stone plan when they arrive at the tournament. He’ll create a distraction while Brison swaps him out for Excalibur, them being identical aside from length. Being used to commit a theft is the bad deed that Calibre wants and Brison can return the sword later and claim he retrieved it from the thieves and get a boon from Arthur.

Why, this plan is foolproof!

Calibre does create a distraction by using his telepathic way of speaking to cause a huge fight to break out in the crowd and Brison swaps out the swords but the guards notice that the sword in the display case doesn’t match the indentation in the velvet display pillow.

Brison is captured and thrown in jail while Calibre is left forgotten on the tournament grounds.

Also forgotten, Swayback chews through his tether, finds Calibre and gently picks up the sword in his horse teeth.

Calibre calls out to Brison and explains that this all went according to plan. See, either the theft goes off without a hitch and Calibre not only is used in a theft but also gets to take up his intended place at King Arthur’s side if only for a little OR Brison gets caught and Calibre gets to commit the sin of putting the blame on someone else.

But I thought Calibre couldn’t betray the one who found it? Ah, but it was Swayback, not Brison who found Calibre first. The horse had also been giving the sword lessons in evil and dirty limericks while Brison slept.

So the sword and the horse take off, leaving Brison locked away.

So a sword about Excalibur’s evil twin. Marvelous. This is what language evolved for, to eventually bring us a story where Excalibur’s evil twin tries to replace it.

[thebibliomancer]

Liveblog: Not Ours To See by David Langford

Some old acquaintances gather in a pub to drink and speculate upon the infinite. One of them bemoans: “If only it were possible! To pierce the veil of futurity, to glimpse the ineffable radiance of days to come, and to make an absolute killing in the National Lottery!”

Another pipes up that if seeing the future was possible, so many would be winning the lotto that the payoff would be lousy.

But this starts up Dagon Smythe, who fancies himself a psychic investigator, despite all efforts to change the topic quickly.

Dagon mentions that he once dabbled a little in the divinatory arts and has quite a tale to tell, despite the reluctance of everyone in attendance. First, he grabs the Unnamed POV Character’s hand and using palmistry announces that the Line of Life indicates a small but imminent financial upset, as might be caused by buying the next round. The immediate assent from everyone else at the table makes this a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Freshly boozed, Dagon outlines what he has called Smythe’s Law: that too many prophets spoil the broth. “Those faint shadows cast back through time by future events might be likened to frail and shy creatures of the night, suddenly confronted by the psychic equivalent of a horde of press photographers with flashguns. The sheer presence of attention dispels any possible message.”

But the trick is to listen on a less crowded means of prognostication. Dagon goes through several obscure forms of divination with humorous commentary on his attempts. Like spodomancy, the finding of portents in ashes or sideromancy, which involves watching the movement of straws placed on red-hot irons but turned into spodomancy too quickly for him.

He’s told to get to the point and he talks about how he invented a new and personal form of divination - ailurotrophemancy, or the divination through the study of cat food.

Not just any cat food, oddly enough. It would only work with a brand called Vitamog, which Dagon’s fussy cat Pyewacket insisted upon.

His drinking buddies snigger but Dagon insisted that he saw glimpses of the future while spooning out the glistening lumps of cat food. Only small things - a headline that he would see the next day, his next grocery bill, the future doings of cats in his back garden. Psychic investigators are, of course, above mere sordid manners of finance but Smythe sadly comments that a good stock market tip or winning lotto numbers would have been useful confirmation.

However, Dagon notices with a growing sense of dread that the future was obscured by some monstrous, formless doom-laden future event. He found that he was not able to see at all beyond June 16th and was seized by a personal fear - it is a common thing about not being able to see beyond the end of your own life.

One of the drinkers points out that it is now November which does lessen the suspense of the tale somewhat.

As the date drew near, Dagon took careful psychic precautions and on the day itself, he opened the final tin of Vitamog he had in the house and stared into the cat bowl only to see a blurry newspaper. He retreated within a pentacle and waited for twenty-four hours (to the consternation of his cat who left and returned with a present of a neighbor’s goldfish).

After June 16th ended, Dagon left the pentacle and found the world unchanged. Except for a newspaper that he recognized from his vision. He saved a relevant clipping and shows it to his friends: a short article about Vitamog being discontinued due to a scare about poisonous contaminants in some of the tins.

A somewhat protracted silence followed.

“Now,” said Smythe with a rhetorical wave of his hand, “which of you mentioned ‘the old one about not being able to see beyond the end of your own life’? The psychic implications are so very fascinating, the more you consider them...”

We looked at him. It was hard to know what to say, but eventually I found appropriate words to honour his raconteur skills.

“Smythe,” I said, “it’s your turn to buy the drinks.”

There was general applause.

[thebibliomancer]

Liveblog: The Winds of Fate by Tony Rath

If there’s anything writers like more than nursery rhyme noir, its ‘Napoleonic Wars + fantasy element.’ This time, its Wind Wizards.

Wind Wizards are wizards who control the wind. Indeed, they can summon up a mighty gust. That is a fart joke. There is a lot of farting. Wind Wizards CAN control the wind but they can also telepathically communicate with each other but for some reason, that causes much fart. Also? Wind Wizards are werewolves. From the far north of Lapland.

They’re a mercenary lot, prized by both England and France due to the advantage they pose if you have one helping steer a large ship.

The plot is that one Mr. LeBroque was in France spying for the English. But he has gotten injured and sent word for someone to help bring him back to England because he has Vital Information. But he doesn’t trust the English government so he will only see Sir Danvers.

The English government sends agent Koki from the Finnish Board of Interrogation in case Mr. LeBroque refuses to leave. Can’t leave him in France alive, after all.

Agent Koki is fun. It transpires he’s also a Wind Wizard and he’s constantly eating meat and cracking pungent jokes about it. Like chowing down on some calves’ liver and commenting that its “Offally good” or eating some sheeps’ eyes and saying that they’ll “see him through the evening.”

Anyway, after some trouble, Koki and Danvers meet up with some other Wind Wizards and much sniffing of butts is had. They take the two to LeBroque.

LeBroque reports that Bonaparte trapped the Wind Wizards in France and pressed them into service. He has a Super Secret Plan that he needs them for. The French had acquired a number of things from their Egyptian campaign, including three hundred and eighty flying carpets. The instruction manuals having been in old Aramaic, they’ve only gotten the dang things to go up and down but they can use Wind Wizards to push them along.

The carpets have all been sewn together so a large number of French troops can fly right over the Channel, past the superior British navy and invade England.

LeBroque returns with Danvers and Koki. There’s a spot of trouble with a French ship but they are saved by a special British airship, held aloft by a newly discovered gas (so much gas in this story) and propelled by junior Wind Wizards. The men who man these airships are called the Skywalkers, under the command of Captain Lucas (I get it).

Anyway, with the information LeBroque can provide, plus Wind Wizard’s telepathic abilities, the British ambush the giant amalgam flying carpet, rescue the captive Wind Wizards and let the French troops fall into the sea when the carpet gets ripped apart by conflicting winds.

And the whole thing ends in a dick joke.

Seriously though, airbending psychic finnish werewolves. That’s rad.

[thebibliomancer]

Liveblog: Broadway Barbarian by Cherith Baldry

So this one is fun.

We get another frame story where someone is telling someone a thing what happened. In dialect.

Our unnamed protagonist is enjoying a stew when some rough customers called Harry the Horse, Spanish John, and Little Isadore come in looking for a Eugene Edmonton. Protagonisty doesn’t know Eugene but if Harry the Horse is looking for him, he’s liable to turn up dead. No, no, says Harry. He has a proposition for Eugune.

FLASHBACK TO LAST THURSDAY.

Eugene is sitting at Good Time Charley’s crying into his drink. He has the love feelings for Miss Paulette Patrick, a dancer at Miss Missouri Martin’s Sixteen Hundred club. But she won’t love him back and he’s thinking of scragging himself. See, he keeps sending her diamond bracelets and fur wraps and she keeps sending them back because she doesn’t want a rich guy. She wants a knight in shining armor, a guy that does heroic deeds.

Also, the story is narrated by Harry the Horse and he comments on things. Things like thinking its silly to scrag yourself over a dame and that the dame is daffy anyhow since knights in shining armor are few and far between. Colorful character, our Harry the Horse.

Anway, then this big dude comes into Good Time Charley’s. He’s only wearing a sort of fur apron, fur boots, and a leather belt with a sword. He stands out, basically.

He introduces himself as Thurg (with the usual difficulties with first person pronouns) and tells everyone that he’s looking for the Eye of God, a big ol’ ruby from a temple statue.

Feeling awfully Conan all of a sudden.

Eugene jumps up and tells Thurg that he doesn’t know where the Eye of God is but he will happily help him look for it. Why, it would be a heroic deed and maybe Miss Paulette Patrick would love him for it.

Thurg happily declares Eugene his friend and they set off together.

Harry the Horse and co follow along because, c’mon, giant ruby.

First stop, the Sixteen Hundred club. Because what’s the sense of doing a heroic deed if your lady isn’t there to see it.

Along the way, Thurg tells them about the evil Great Wizard Alphazor who also seeks the Eye of God. Harry the Horse wonders if he means a card shark, that being the only kind of wizard he’s familiar with.

But at the Sixteen Hundred Club, Thurg takes a fancy for Miss Paulette and declares “Thurg like. You Thurg woman now.” So he flings her over his shoulder and bolts out the door.

Eugene gives chase (Harry the Horse, Spanish John, and Little Isadore following along) but only catches up when Thurg stops to gawk at a jewelry store. He sees a large-ish ruby, declares it the Eye of God, and passes Miss Paulette to Eugene asking him to “Hold Thurg woman.”

And then he headbutts the store window, setting off the alarm. Harry the Horse contemplates swiping some things but he sees some cops and he figures plausible deniability is the better part of valor.

Thurg having the ruby, now wants ‘his’ woman back. Eugene tries to talk sense to him. He reminds Thurg that they’re friends and that Miss Paulette is his woman and friends don’t take friends’ womans.

Thurg has to think this through and its an unfamiliar sensation but he decides nah it his woman and punches Eugene. And down he gooooes.

But then the ‘evil’ Great Wizard shows up and scolds Thurg. “Can I not take mine eyes off thee for two minutes without thou quittest thy proper dimension and troublest these good folk?”

Instead of obeying Alphazor when he asks him to come back, Thurg abconds and Alphazor chases after him.

And nobody involved sees either of them again.

Eugene comes to and apologizes that he couldn’t do a heroic deed for Miss Paulette. But she has realized that heroic deeds are nothing abut phonus bolonus and would rather a guy that takes her dancing.

So thats the story. And the reason that Harry the Horse is looking for Eugene is because Harry swiped the Eye of God ruby from Thurg before he ran off and since he’s short of scratch presently, he wants to ask Eugene if he’ll buy the Eye of God as a wedding present for Miss Paulette.

CONAN-esque IN MODERN jazz? TIMES! Not surprisingly, he does not well fit the social mores.

[thebibliomancer]

Liveblog: Math Takes a Holiday by Paul Di Filippo

Oy this story. It has fun bits but its... difficult.

So there’s a guy called Lucas Latulippe who is a professor of mathematics at A University. He also happens to be extremely religiously devout. And kind of a snob about it. His establishing moment, as it were, is him pitying people who are into sciences and religion because they have to reconcile their beliefs with their secular professions - mesh the Garden of Eden and Darwinism, for example.

Unlike the raw glory of mathematics. Math is just great. Comes straight from God, probably. 

Anyway, beset by unbelievers and whatevers, Lucas prays “Dear God, please allow my mocking colleagues to witness the transcendental glory of Thy sovereign mathematical Holy Spirit-” Of course, he doesn’t expect much to come of this, let alone two Saints of Mathematics.

And the two Saints (Saint Hubert and Saint Barbara) are honestly the best part of this story. 

But before the Saints come marching in, Lucas is talked into attending a faculty party by Pisky Wispaway, the dean of the Astronomy Department, who is harboring a not small crush on Lucas. But he’s uncomfortable with her because she’s fat and gets in his comfort bubble. Her entire existence is basically fat jokes.

=|

Anyway, at the party, Lucas gets into an argument with Owen Hulme, his archnemesis his mocks his religion and says his beliefs verge on the Kaballah. That’s an insult I guess??

Lucas leaves the part early because NEWMAN er I mean Owen, stops by church to pray for the chastisement of unbelievers (”Persistent fellow, isn’t he? Doesn’t he know we’re already on our way?” “Did you ask the Bird to announce us?” “Why, no, I though you did.”) and then goes to bed.

So. The Saints. We are introduced to them in heaven arguing with one another to the chagrin of God, who for His own ineffable reasons has manifested as an enormous Sequoia Tree.

The Saints seem not to get along because they’re both the saints of mathematics, neither thinks the other deserves to be the ‘of mathematics’ based on their lives, and they constantly get into dick waving contests with each other. Its pretty great.

Saint Barbara even feels that Hubert gets the best saint jobs and wonders if heaven has a glass ceiling, which causes Sequoia-God to nervously ask her not to raise that touchy subject.

The long and short of it is that God puts them both on the Lucas assignment.

So the Saints come marching in and visit Lucas. He’s a bit nonplussed and thinks its a bit of a hoax, until Barbara pulls her head off and spurts blood everywhere (she’s a decapitated martyr donchaknow?).

And now that he has some heavenly assistance, its time to humble some nonbelievers. By the by, Barbara and Hubert can work miracles but only math miracles.

So he goes to Owen’s office. Owen currently has a visitor, one Doctor Garnett. Lucas has the Saints reveal themselves but Owen just thinks its a conjuring act and tells Lucas to gtfo or he’ll call campus security.

Lucas is a bit discombobulated - “These unbelievers appeared unfazed by Saintly auras. Earlier, Lucas had imagined this moment as his invincible triumph. But nobody seemed to know their lines in the script he had mentally written.”

He shouts for Barbara to stop Owen from calling security. Which she does. By reducing him to two-dimensions. When Doctor Garnett tries to punch Lucas for this, Lucas asks Hubert for help and he fractalizes Doctor Garnett, replacing his hands and feet with smaller versions of his own body and so on. And then Doctor Garnett’s wife comes in and starts screaming so Barbara shrinks her. WITH MATH.

Welp, time to skip town. Pisky shows up, concerned for Lucas and invites herself along, resulting in his scooter being slowed down to jogging speed. Because she’s heavy.

Lucas asks the Saints for help and they alter the numerical value of Lambda to create directed anti-gravity.

The foursome hide out on top of a cloud and Lucas realizes that he let his pride and piety get the better of him. He asks the Saints if they can turn back time to before all this happened but let him keep his memory.

They can but Barbara just wants you to know she’s so bored with people asking her to turn back time (with MATH). Mortals need to have a little more imagination.

But before they turn back time, Pisky asks that they use MATH to make her skinny, even if only for a minute. Which the Saints do. Her dress falls off because skinny now and she hurls herself into Lucas’ arms. AND WOW HE’S ACTUALLY INTERESTED IN HER NOW, HUH.

So with time turned back, the Saints return to bickering, this time comparing their respective failures - Hubert with Fermat’s Last Theorem (”’No room in the margin’, indeed.”) and Barbara with cold fusion. “I’ve improved over time,” she offers. “That, I believe, is God’s plan,” Hubert says.

In Lucas’ new time line, he envies rather than pities his peers because they don’t have to look over their shoulders warily, nervous about the possibility of inconveniently real miracles.

“And of course, having a beautiful, slim, loving wife like Pisky would make any man’s life quite happy. And, after all, they were the only couple they knew whose marriage had literally been made in Heaven.”

I APPRECIATE ENDING ON A PUN BUT GEEZ. Math miracles and saints aside, this story was a bit heinous.

[thebibliomancer]

Liveblog: Touched by a Salesman by Tom Holt

This is a comic fantasy anthology so sometimes get stories like this where so much of it is funny that I have to hold off from just transcribing the whole thing. So many fun phrasings and such.

There are days that convince you that God is a game-show host, and that His hidden cameras are filming you while a studio audience laughts itself sick at your carefully staged misfortunes.

Or perhaps a soap opera during sweeps, dumping a seasons worth of misfortune in one half-hour block.

Paul is having one of those days. His car broke, his girlfriend dumped him, and he was fired. Plus, he missed the bus.

The locals had long since come to terms with the fact that the 47 route passed through a pocket of non-relativistic space somewhere between Sainsbury’s car park and Debenhams, with the result that what seemed like two minutes inside the bus actually lasted at least half an hour in real time, with the interesting concomitant effect that whereas (according to the schedules) the bus stopped outside Higson’s Shoe Repairs at 19.37, if you arrived there as 19.35.15 precisely, you’d be just in time to watch its tail-lights disappearing round the back of Burger King. You could set your watch by the Number 47, the locals reckoned, provided your watch had been designed by Salvador Dali.

Anyway, having missed the bus, Paul happens to see what seems to be a meteorite crash down in a construction site.

Having always wanted to find a meteorite, he sneaks into the site but trips over someone while stumbling around in the dark.

An odd someone.

There was something about the voice that wasn’t quite right. The accent, for example; it was a bit like a Scandinavian carefully imitating an American new-reader through a mouth full of sponge cake.

On top of that, they seem confused as to what planet they’re on. Mercury is their first guess. And they want to know where the spaceport is.

When the weirdo turns on a light, Paul is a bit flabbergasted. The weirdo has wings, a flowing nightgown, and a halo. Exactly like an angel. Paul tells him he can’t be an angel, no such thing. The stranger just shrugs, Paul is entitled to his opinion.

When Paul continues acting confused, the stranger transforms into a carbon copy of him. There, now everything is good forever. He looks just like any other hooman.

Once all this culture shock is out of the way Paul tells the stranger there is no spaceport. Or hyperspace radio communications. Or heuristic self-updating simultaneous translation units. Or any contact with aliens whatsoever.

But how can that be? Paul recognized the stranger as an alien. Ohhhh, its a religious thing. What a silly misunderstanding. Okay, no, angels are not in fact supernatural messengers. Just the normal sort. Well... sales representatives really.

For, uh, novelty goods. You know, junk. Burning bushes, seas that part down the middle, giant fingers writing on walls, hitherto unnoticed stars that seem to follow you about. He’d show Paul a catalog but he left it in the ship. And he crashed the ship into an asteroid.

Not knowing what else to do, Paul invites the angel (his name, by the by, is 6340097/227/3) home.

Paul and 6340097/227/3 compare bad days but there’s some culture difference. A vehicle breaking is a blessing because they you can sew the company for lots of money. Getting fired from your job is a relief because their social security system is “extremely generous, and accounts for 69.2% of our population dying of cholesterol poisoning before they reach the age of twelve” while employment is a lifelong sentence (over seventy-thousand years) for criminals who have done things too serious to warrant the death penalty. And well, the females of his species devour the males two hours after mating so. From 6340097/227/3‘s perspective, Paul had a good day.

So there’s no spaceport but maybe Paul can help 6340097/227/3 build a simple hyperspatial beacon. I mean, you can build it with household items. You have antimatter right? No.

6340097/227/3 is not overall impressed with the technological level on Earth. But he is impressed with tea cups. Imagine that humans could come up with integrated beverage-container handles and yet still be stranded on Earth. They don’t have anything like it where he’s from.

Paul is wondering what he’s going to do with 6340097/227/3 when he turns on the tv to “one of those cosy-detective series, where people get horribly murdered in the heart of the idyllic English countryside.”

6340097/227/3 gets excited upon seeing a church in the program and asks Paul to take him to one. Luckily, there is one within a few minutes of his house. The angelien pulls an access panel off the altar, exposing cables and conduits and a keyboard.

Yup, churches are spaceships, ZZ885 Starglider models. Well, not all of them obviously. Some of them were just human copies of what they figured were buildings. Must have been left behind by 6340097/227/3‘s people at some point.

So the church takes off and Paul heads home, figuring you help an angel and your life gets sorted out. I mean, that’s how things should be, right? Well, he gets home but his girlfriend’s not there wanting to patch things up. And he doesn’t get a call from his boss offering his job back. And his car is still broken. In fact, he gets a call from the garage the next day saying his car is MORE broken.

Three months later, a meteorite crashes through his window which dispenses two messages. The first says: “Dear Paul, got home safe. Sold the cups-with-handles idea to our biggest corporation for an obscenely vast amount of money. Fifty-fifty, do you agree? Regards, 6340097/227/3.”

The other message is a check for 90,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 czxyskd, which you may recognize as not being legal tender on Earth.

Paul eventually has the check framed and hung on his wall. And it cost him twenty quid to fix his broken window.

[thebibliomancer]

Liveblog: Crispin the Turnspit by Anthony Armstrong

Apparently this author was known for writing social satire disguised as fairy tales.

Anyway, ONCE UPON A TIME there was a lad named Crispin. He could understand the speech of animals. Might have been given to him by fairies. Fairies are always doing that shit.

So Crispin decides to go to the Royal Court to seek his fortune so he can provide for his old ailing mother. Chief of which, he wants to arrange a companion for her to talk to at length about her health issues, that being her favorite topic.

So about a month later, Crispin finds himself the Deputy Assistant Turnspit in the Royal Kitchen and applies through formal channels to get a chance to demonstrate his talents before the king.

So the application goes through the Assistant Turnspit, the Turnspit to the Head Turnspit, the Assistant Under Scullion, the Lance Scullion, all the way up to the Sergeant Scullion, Under Cooks to the Cooks, Chefs, Butlers’ Major Domos, a long stay with the Comptroller of the Royal Household, and eventually to the king’s vizier.

Cooking is more complicated than I could have imagined.

The Vizier has some trouble parsing the request due to all the scribbled remarks from its long trek up the hierarchy but after he scrapes off some dried gravy and shows the application to the Court Magician.

The Court Magician is a jealous old man and he so emphatically insists that its not worth looking into that the Vizier figures that its worth looking into. Because screw the Court Magician.

So the Vizier brings the matter up with the king (and gets fined for saying the word ‘spit’ in the process of saying turnspit. The king has a weird habit of fining people for improper behavior. Carries a little blue notebook to keep track).

The king figures this could be interesting and a page is dispatched to bring Crispin to the king.

Crispin demonstrates his gift by interpreting the king’s hound, Bouncer. Who first wants to know why the king kicked him and then wants to know if he can get another chop bone like he was given earlier on before Crispin arrived.

He also interprets for the king’s other dogs.

One of them, a lady dog, really ought never to have known such words, and Crispin felt a little embarrassed.

The king is indeed impressed and tells Crispin that he could have a bright future ahead of him but the Court Magician announces that he’s going to fetch an animal of his own to test Crispin.

And instead he turns a page into a large green and orange rabbit with four pairs of ears and tells the page-rabbit to say certain exact things.

The poor page-rabbit is being forced to say things like “The King has an ugly red nose from drinking too much Marsala” and “the King is a silly old buster!”

If Crispin repeats such things to the king, well, its not going to be good. But if he says something else, the Court Magician will have him there too!

Crispin feeling that he shouldn’t say such things tells the king that the weird rabbit is just complimenting him, saying he’s a very handsome man and has the noblest heart in the kingdom.

The Court Magician reveals that the rabbit is simply a page and that he told him to say certain exact things and that Crispin got it wrong therefore he’s a fraud.

The king isn’t sure. “I mean, it was what one might expect a rabbit of perception to say!”

The Vizier being a cunning sort, asks the Court Magician exactly what the page was told to say. Which sort of traps the Court Magician in his own trap. He turns the page into a tortoise so he won’t say anything.

The king tells the magician maybe he should get to bed, he’s acting out of sorts.

When the magician is gone, the king asks Crispin if he would like to be Assistant Court Magician but Crispin responds that he doesn’t think it would be good for his health.

The Vizier has a good idea though when Crispin says he just wants to return to the forest and provide for his mother. Crispin will be appointed a member of the King’s secret service and send weekly reports on what the forest animals are talking about.

Since birds fly all over, the king will be able to learn what is going on all over the kingdom that way.

Its a great idea and the king is glad HE thought of it.

And so it was arranged. Crispin got for his mother all that she wanted, and lived in the forest and sent his weekly reports to the King. The King’s omniscience became a marvel to everyone, though when people respectfully asked him how he did it, he used to reply: “Ah, a little bird told me!” which, as very few people know noawadays, is the real origin of that old saying.

That’s the second story in a row when some convoluted amazing nonsense is given as the origin behind a mundane thing.

[thebibliomancer]

Liveblog: The Queen’s Triplets by Israel Zangwill

A good old silly fairy tale-esque tale today. By the dude who wrote one of the first great locked-room mysteries.

As the title suggests, the Queen gives birth to triplets. Identical triplets.

This put the king out a great deal. The crown should only pass to the eldest but the triplets had gotten all mixed up and none could tell what their relative ages were.

To distinguish the triplets, they were dressed all in green, blue or black. Which happened to be the colors of the national flag. And so they became known as the Green Prince, the Black Prince and the Blue Prince. Very handy.

The king grew old and knew he had to sort out this heir issue lest the country be embroiled in civil war when he passed but eh, never do today what you can put off until tomorrow.

But then the Princess of Paphlagonia was suddenly orphaned. This was a problem because by an ancient treaty, she must marry the eldest son. And obviously you can’t leave an orphaned princess to flap about unmarried for long. That invites trouble.

So the king visits an Oracle and asks her who the eldest son is.

After foaming at the mouth like an open champagne bottle, she replied: “The eldest is he that the Princess shall wed.”

The king says he already knew that and the oracle suggests that if he’s not happy with the service, he can look for answers elsewhere.

So he consults some wise men and they suggest a course of action that pleases the king greatly.

So the king goes to fetch the Princess of Paphlagonia but returns two days later with news that the princess was confined to her quarters and that she would not arrive in the city until the next year.

So on the last day of the year, the king gathers the three princes and tells them that As They Know, only one of them can be the heir and that one has to be the eldest. And the heir and the eldest would wed the Princess of Paphlagonia.

And rolling a die to decide is undignified so an Epic Quest it shall have to be then. So the king sends the princes out to seek a sea serpent that plagues the land with inky vomit every ninth moon. Soothsayers say the serpent cannot be killed but if one of the princes can get it to lay off for a year, that would be a mighty achievement.

Also, he’s not some rpg questgiver. He’s a goddamn king so if you want any equipment before setting out you only have to ask.

Before anyone else could speak up, the Black Prince claimed the magic boat that can sail under the seas and has mighty armaments.

So the Green Prince chooses the next best thing and asks for the magic car which can soar through the air.

The Blue Prince, who seems a bit lost in meditation, only asks for a little pigeon to the amusement of the court.

So the next day the three princes set out. But first, they mock the Blue Prince for the pigeon thing and get into a fight with each other. The Green Prince and Black Prince trade car for boat because how dare you suggest it was unfair for the Black Prince to claim the boat before anyone else. He’ll take the car just to prove he doesn’t need the dang boat.

The two set off but the Blue Prince announces his intention to just wait for them at the river mouth. They’ll find him still here when they return on the ninth moon, he promises.

So when his brothers are gone, the Blue Prince occupies himself building a hut, finding food and employing the pigeon in some manner. Most of the time, he just lay among the flowers, watching the river or the moons or joyfully reading scraps of papyrus.

And when the eight moon was waning, the Black Prince returns. He flew back and forward over the entire ocean and couldn’t find the serpent. What a fool he was to give up the boat.

The Blue Prince invites him into the hut for some food.

And then the Green Prince returns. He sailed every inch of the ocean surface and sailed every inch beneath it but couldn’t find the sea serpent. What a fool he was to give up the car.

The Blue Prince invites him into the hut for some food.

As for himself, the Blue Prince stays outside, awaiting his pigeon. It returns but the Black Prince catches it and finds a slip of papyrus tied to its leg and demands the Blue Prince explain this and the poetry on the papyrus.

The Blue Prince explains that he has been penpals with the Princess this whole time - hence why he asked for a pigeon to be a carrier. Blue had figured out that the Princess was in fact kept in the tower in the suburbs by the fact that he kept seeing flashes of light from the tower. Implying a mirror, implying a woman, implying a very beautiful woman due to the frequency of the flashes.

Through the course of their correspondence, he and the princess fell deeply in love with each other.

Also, the Blue Prince figures that a royal wedding will stave off the sea serpents visit. ... Because sea serpents love weddings, probably. I mean, I’ve heard that before.

The Black Prince goes nice plan bro, mind if I take it? Before you answer, consider this murder threat.

So he plans to claim that he traded the car for the pigeon and was the one corresponding to the princess all along. He forces Blue to swear an oath never to reveal the truth. Because murder.

The Blue Prince reflected that though life without love was hardly worth living, death was quite useless. So he swore and went in to supper. When he found that the Green Prince had not spared even a baked chestnut before he fell asleep, he swore again.

So the Princes return to the king and the Black Prince claims a solution for the sea serpent re: wedding. The king is overjoyed and congratulates his youngest son on his achievement.

Youngest son? Well, yeah, of course. You send three brothers on the same quest, its always the youngest who emerges triumphant.

You Tried, Black Prince.

Anyway, now that the odds are down to 50-50, the king figures that the princess will choose the eldest to marry because it was oracled.

The princess, being a person and not a lamp, claims she’ll only marry the prince that had written to her. The king counters this - the ancient treaty is on six feet of parchment and that outranks a girl who is five foot eight.

Anyway, the princess is brought into the city and put before the Green and Blue Princes (the Black Prince having been sent to bed early, as the youngest. HAH!).

She has with her the pigeon and when the princess curtsies the pigeon flies off towards the master it recognizes. Because pigeons are better than humans at distinguishing triplets?

Anyway, the Blue Prince takes the pigeon and lets it fly towards the Princess.

But the Princess, her bosom heaving as if another pigeon fluttered beneath the white samite, caught it and set it free again, and again it made for the Blue Prince.

Interesting similes this author uses.

Anyway, they pass the pigeon back and forth a few times and then recite some of their poetry to each other.

Such was the origin of lawn tennis, which began with people tossing pigeons to each other in imitation of the Prince and Princess in the Palace Hall. And this is why love plays so great a part in the game, and that is how the match was arranged between the Blue Prince and the Princess of Paphlagoma.

I learned something today!

[thebibliomancer]

Liveblog: Ferdie by F. Anstey

We have here a story of weird fantasy. By one of the pioneers of the genre, apparently.

The story is narrated by a Lionel Alchin Filleter who is relating a very unpleasant experience he had the previous Christmas.

Lionel, being keen on gardening, got a bag of assorted anemone bulbs and roots at an auction and planted the lot. One of them was bigger and Lionel thought it might be a unique variety so he planted it under the drawing-room window apart from the rest.

The other anemones sprout and Lionel forgets all about the one under the window which does not.

Until the night before Christmas.

Lionel is reading “Psuedodoxia Epidemica, or Enquiries into very many received Tenents and commonly presumed Truths.” Specifically, a section on mandrakes which dismisses their mythic qualities as ridiculous.

While Lionel is contemplating that anemone root that never sprouted - which was awfully man-shaped - he hears a shriek out in the yard.

His sister’s black dachs had dug up the root. Lionel spots the dog lying motionless on the ground but also hears a rustling as something climbs up towards the window.

A black, wizened imp of a thing climbs into the window and says “I hope you were not alarmed by the noise. It was only me.”

The mandrake, because thats what it was apparently, apologizes saying that it was startled when the dog dug it up.

Lionel is quite disgusted by the mandrake, especially when it asks for him to take it in. He insists that the mandrake leave at once or be thrown out.

Also, the mandrake asks to be called Ferdie so TITLE DROP!

Ferdie asks where he should go and Lionel tells it to take the matter up with the auction house. So Ferdie borrows the clothes from a Golliwogg and sets off.

The next day is Christmas and Ferdie shows up again. He could find no one to speak with at the auction house and wonders if he could trespass on Lionel for a meal. And maybe the name of a tailor? See, it has grown somewhat to two feet tall and the doll clothes no longer fit.

Ferdie is overall convinced that he and Lionel would get on smashingly if he was just given a chance. Surely they would have much in common if he would only regard him as a friend.

Lionel instead tells him to get out, nobody would want to associate with a mandrake. So Ferdie asks him to give his word of honor as an English gentleman never to reveal what he is to any living soul.

A safe promise since Lionel never intends to see him again. He also gives him the name and address of Vicar Casbird, expecting him to put Ferdie in his proper place.

Although later that same evening, Lionel meets Casbird and the vicar has nothing but praise for his new acquaintance. An ugly thing but so bright and cheery! So touchingly grateful for the least kindness.

LATER IT IS BOXING DAY and the Dudlows are having a party for their children which means that a lot of adults are invited because that is how social works. Lionel is there and has a Thing for the Dudlows’ adult daughter Violet. Casbird is also there and has brought Ferdie along.

Lionel is not happy to see him there.

He is not happy that everyone is acting like Ferdie is the life of the party. He’s entertaining everyone with bad conjuring tricks and organizing games.

But everyone else isn’t happy with how sour Lionel is being.

So Lionel confronts Ferdie in private and at length threatens to break his word and tell everyone that Ferdie is a mandrake.

Ferdie warns that if Lionel does so, he’ll be the chief sufferer of his rashness.

Lionel takes this as a threat and says he won’t take any steps as long as Ferdie behaves itself.

But when Mr. Dudlow proposes a toast to Ferdie, Lionel stands all he can stands and he can stands no more. He interrupts the toast and declares in front of everyone that FERDIE IS A MANDRAKE!

“And if he is a Mandrake, sir, what of it?”

OH SNAP

Everyone considers Lionel quite snobbish for his prejudice against this person of vegetable birth.

Ferdie then gets up and makes a speech about how it was foolish to think that it could “forget the inferiority of its position, and share for a few too fleeting hours in the innocent revelry of happy children, at a season, too, when it had fondly hoped that charity and goodwill might be shown to all alike. But I had made it realize its mistake - and now it could only implore us that it would trouble us but a very little while longer.”

And then he dies.

Just kind of shrivels back into a root. Because it had held Lionel in such high regard but Lionel had regarded Ferdie with only bitter antipathy. Too much for the sensitive dear.

But first, it asks that Lionel accept a ring from a Christmas cracker as a token of remembrance. And to know that Ferdie forgives him.

Lionel makes zero friends by opining that Ferdie is faking his death.

And his social life just sort of dies. The Dudlow’s forbid him from ever visiting them again. His sister asks that he move out. Casbird might try to kill him later.

Lionel reflects on what happened. Wondering if he should have held his tongue, minded his own business, had a more seasonal compassion about the whole thing.

And then he decides nah, that mandrake was a jerk and everyone was overreacting. They’d come to their senses.

And then he hears another shrill cry. BUT IT WAS ALL A DREAM?!

So, uh, what do we take from all of this? Be nice to Mandrakes? Dreams be weird?